How Interest Types Shape Conditional Content on Your Finance Website – BeliefMedia Finance & Mortgage Broker Digital Marketing

We describe our mortgage broker website as the chameleon of the website world because it morphs shape based on known traffic. This shape-shifting is a defining feature of our proprietary escalation of commitment methodology that, in part, is responsible for delivering more business than any other competing website, website funnel, marketing funnel, or Facebook experience in the finance market. To help shape our understanding of user interactions, we assign an interest type to various assets that provides your website (and our AI) with guidance on how to best craft higher-performing funnel pathways. This article introduces how the interest type is used, and we provide a brief demo of the kind of data that your website will archive on each user interaction.

Your Website is an Essential Component of Your Marketing Funnel

While the vast array of integrated features in our mortgage broker website would justify a high fee, we've made the site extremely affordable in order to ensure a larger percentage of the market is positioned to take advantage of the product. As the only website ever built for the finance industry that is framed to support a real website funnel, and the only website designed to support Facebook advertising, it performs amazingly well, but quite frankly, it'd be unfair of us to build the full cost of the conditional features into our product because we know that many brokers won't ever go near them. There's a clear workload associated with building a large and comprehensive conditional website full of libraries, resources, industry pages, and tools... and it's an effort that we're fully aware many brokers won't have the time to explore. That said, the advantages of conditional escalation on a trafficked website with an integrated marketing funnel is one that cannot be overstated.

The website funnel is something that is largely ignored by many, but it is intrinsically connected to the marketing funnel because it's where we learn more about our client, and where we're able to escalate their commitment or pivot their journey. The website funnel is the backbone upon which the marketing funnel relies. We see so many business owners simply relegating their post-subscription follow-up to nothing other than email, and they'll completely fail to consider the website interactions that potentially shifts the focus of your email and other nurturing programs. This worst-practice solution is rarely a business' fault - it's often introduced to them by the industry charlatans claiming to provide a lead generation service.

We rant on all the time about the business-debilitating consequences of hosting your landing pages on Click Funnels, High Level, or any other third-party services, and it's the advantages described on this page that begins to introduce some of the bigger-picture benefits of an integrated system. Bottom line: never host your landing pages on a third-party service (and copying 'embed' code into your website is the same thing). The notion that you'll host pages on a third-party platform when you have the capacity to serve those pages yourself is utterly absurd, and if introduced by a marketing service, it a defining feature of professional negligence.

Marketing Plan: The typical approach many businesses will take when considering their marketing plan is to simply 'build a website', and then "see what comes next" (it is the finance equivalent of providing a home loan product to a client without knowing anything about them). Your efforts should first be invested in establishing what you want your marketing to look like, and then building a framework that is synchronously choreographed, with your website 'conducting' the integrated orchestration. Part of the reason most of the Facebook marketing the industry provides is so ridiculously poor is because it's 'bolted on' to a framework that in no way supports the advertising efforts or experience. We see many businesses rely on email for isolated follow-up - a seriously flawed and low-performing approach. The website we provide businesses is designed to support your marketing program - it is not a generic placeholder for your phone number.

The Junkyard Example: We very recently worked closely with a Sydney-based business that had a horrendously bad three-page website built to support the operation (the front page was called a 'landing page' but it was nothing of the sort - it absolutely wouldn't ever convert. The business had Facebook representation in Victoria (they manufactured very poor low-performing non-compliant ads), and the business had a video guy in Sydney (quite good but no idea how the finance industry works). Then there was us. What we walked into was a completely discombobulated junkyard of utter non-compliance introduced to the broker by way of almost zero communication and no team planning. There was no communication between groups, and no assets was connected to any other. Despite the larger budget, there was absolutely no bigger-picture plan to make the system work. It was, without question, the most non-compliant low-performing mess of nonsense non-compliant marketing we'd ever walked into.

We find that as a business starts to see the advantages of a focused content strategy they'll start to assign more effort and resources into maintaining a powerful conditional website and integrated marketing funnel.

What is an Interest Type?

An interest type is simply a keyword assigned to certain actions. These actions include (but are far from limited to) the following:

Whenever there's an interaction we're able to record, or a 'declared' interest by way of any interaction, we'll assign an appropriate 'score' to the user data in order to build an understanding of the user.

The 'score' assigned to each interaction is based on the 'probably certainty' a user is interested in a specific subject (yes, we recognise the oxymoron, but it does best describe the outcome: 'informed guesswork'). For example, the interest type automatically determined by way of a Venus report is high because it is part of a questionnaire that serves a user with a report based on their responses (we expect honest answers because the user ideally wants a report that is of value to them). On the flip side, the score assigned to a standard internal link is low (in most cases, and unless otherwise defined, the value of a link click is '1'; in contrast, the interest assigned by way of a Venus report is '100'). Subscribing to a lead magnet by way of a landing page records an interest score of roughly '50', although the interactions on the extremely important second page tends to return a higher score based on the escalated interaction.

The interest score on your website is simply an incremental count of the interest values assigned to certain interactions. On the Yabber Tag: yabber end it's a little more complex; we mash up your data with browsing patterns and pathways known to create conversions, and we return this data back to your website (this is advanced usage that is discussed elsewhere).

Confused yet? To make it easier to understand we'll create a few examples by way of links. First consider the following link to bank product data. Right click and open in a new tab, then open this link to an article on the bank data archive in the same way. Both links were created using our standard link shortcode ([link url="12345" interest="bank_data"]link text[/link]) and both carry an interest type of 'bank_data' (shown in the example shortcode). For a little variety, click on this link to the Banking Royal Commission archive (with an interest of 'banking_royal_commission').

If you have followed those links above (and refreshed this page) you'll see the incremental values in the list below:

If you have clicked on the bank data links you should see a value of 'bank_data' as at least '2', and a single click to the BRC archive will show a value of '1'.

Coming back to this website in a week, or a month, or even a year, will return the same data. If a user engages with your website on a new computer (meaning the data is not present) but subscribes to another asset or identifies themselves in any way, we'll immediately associate that user with historic interactions and inject their interest scores into your website.

It'a Basic Feature: What we're describing is a basic feature, so why we're the only ones using it is a mystery. Our BeNet system is obviously far more advanced but the page-level interest declarations still have a massive impact on engagement.

Common on E-Commerce Websites: Amazon claims to be able to identify if a buyer is pregnant before they know themselves, and their "you might also be interested in" (recommended) products rendered after a purchase are said to account for over 30% of their total sales. It is also said that social media giants are able to categorise personality with more precision than written personality tests. We're able to establish similar patterns in browsing behaviour, with the most significant data established by way of the pathways for certain types of customers that led to a conversion. Data tells a very clear story - ignoring it is foolish.

Interest Automation: if no interest is defined in a link we'll often resolve an interest based on the URL slug, and we'll apply the interest when sent back to your website. For example, if the page URL includes 'first-home-buyer' in the URL we're clearly able to resolve the interest; if the URL contains 'guarantor' we're able to gain a similar understanding. Even if you don't use conditional features immediately, we recommend you apply the interest to each link because you will use the feature eventually.

When a user comes back to your website - especially when they're participating in the early part of your subscription-based marketing funnel - we can not only force or show certain types of content, but we can should escalate their journey by progressively disclosing or 'introducing' new concepts or information. When a user returns as part of their mid-funnel journey we're recommencing our website funnel from a position of privilege because we know what a user is looking for, and what information is most relevant (even the click they action from social or an email campaign tells us more about them). If you want to create engagement, providing content we know a user will engage with is obviously a massive advantage (the marketing funnel is a journey; we don't want to keep starting that journey from the 'start' position).

What is the Purpose of an Interest Score?

First, an interest score is the most basic method of determining user interactions on your website. The BeNet system works in isolation of interactions and takes a number of other factors into account that are far more predictive in nature. Knowing what a user is interested in at your website level, however, enables us to show content specific to a user that filters to a defined interest type, or we can start to shape the website in a way that is more likely to drive conversions. If a user is interested in First Home Buyer information, for example, we'll show them far more first home buyer information.

There are multiple means upon which to show conditional content but the most common is simply via the use of an Elementor block. You simply drag-and-drop a block into your page and the block will show content that you have created specifically for that interest. The means to create the conditional content is described in an article titled "Add Escalating and Conditional Landing Panels to Your Website". Another article introduces how to force specific interest content regardless of interest score ("Forcing Conditional Website Content for Selected Website Visitors").

Changing Your Front Page

The conditional features of the mortgage broker website allow the front page to be altered in one of two ways:

The former method utilises interest scores to alter the elements of your front page, with the elements taking shape as videos, video panels, and entry messages. The latter method - formerly a Platinum feature but currently being migrated into the standard product - allows you to force the front page to be completely swapped for another based on the forced entry interest URL (once a user follows a specific link to your site they will always see an alternate entry page). The feature is useful for positioning yourself as an expert for certain groups such as the medical industry.

We Record Everything

We record everything a user does, and that information is made available on your website in certain ways, and always interpreted Yabber-side via BeNet. We have a page that shows many of your interactions with this website (page views, downloads, personal details etc.). You'll find the page here.

If you've had funnel-based visits to our website, or if you have subscribed to any of our assets, it's likely you'll see quite a large amount of information; if you're new to us you won't see much at all. Used in the funnel it's this data that may be used to shape the journey of a participant.

Conditional Features are a Forever WIP

The mortgage broker website we provide clients includes a very large number of conditional features.... but we'll be introducing more. All the tools once maintained on our Platinum websites are slowly being migrated to the standard plugin, enabling some seriously high-level functionality.

The features we're introducing to the standard plugin include what we call 'Combination Conditions'. For example, a defined interest type of 'first_home_buyer' attached to a link that is directed to a page that also has the value of 'first_home_buyer' is usually enough to trigger a new subscription type (although if any link is of high enough value we can force a subscription by way of a click of that specific link, and in the same way you might even force a new subscription, or alternate escalation, based on simply visiting a page (see our article on Marketing Triggers).

Our AI is in a constant state of development. In essence, when the system identifies a 'probably certainty' that the user is in the decision phase, the system will update your website with relevant pathway information. The more traffic your website attracts the more likely we're able to determine the pathways that are most likely to convert... and it does take time to 'train' your classifier engine.

This article was necessary in part because we often reference the 'interest' without appropriate context, so it serves as a resource to send those that are interested in learning a little more. The information also supports an article introducing the Mortgage Broker Website that converts more effectively than any competing product in the market.

Coupled with an applied content creation strategy, clear SEO focus on organic traffic, and supplemented by Facebook advertising or other paid promotion, our experience simply returns more business into your pipeline.

When a user lands on your website from any source, they're interested in what you do. If your website fails to convert that user into 'something' then the asset has failed to perform the task it was designed to do. In the same way, if you're sending a user to your website as part of their funnel journey we're required to consider the escalation and treat them appropriately by way of a more relevant experience. You're in competition with other brokers, and even paid traffic will almost always apply appropriate diligence to verify your positioning in your field (so they'll almost always talk to more than one broker), so you need to stand out from the 'others', and your website experience is the most significant consumer-facing asset designed to qualify you in this way.

We understand that most brokers don't invest much time into their digital presence. so the website we provide clients is essentially a turnkey product that doesn't need conditional features enabled, but when your business grows and your marketing matures you'll invariably be drawn to the higher-performing features of our experience.

Featured Image: The Mercantile Bank, 345 Collins St., Melbourne c1900. Picture shows the south-side of Collins Street between Elizabeth and Queen Streets. The Mercantile Bank remains largely intact. [ View Image ]

This content was originally published here.